New Horizons by Max Roy

                      Complaints, Complaints! I am of a generally positive frame of mind, with a cheery outlook on life. Like most of you, I like our times together with others to be happy ones, or, at least, pleasant. In spite of this, my blushing Bride of many years accuses me of being “picky”, of being a “brat”. I think it is important that we try and live in a positive environment. Psychologists advise us to avoid those who might be among us who are likely to spread drear and fear. Life’s too short, right! Laugh it up if you can! I have been giving the matter some serious thought. Do I want the prevailing image of me held by other people to be one that I am “difficult”? Do I have to change my behavior? Hey, this is important stuff! The whole of our social lives may be hanging in the balance! What’s this about me being a “brat” and “picky”? Often, this issue has revolved around food. But, sometime it has been about my choosiness in developing relationships with people. Am I

                            Where Do We Go From Here? What a pickle we are in!   Pax Americanus is dead.. America, the superpower victor of WWII, faced down Russian aspirations for hegemony. China’s communist power was still struggling to digest its gains. Japan was under American tutelage. The European Union was created to end all wars on that continent. The UN was still coming into being. America was the world’s peacekeeper and was ready to spend blood and treasure to work its will. Today, we have China flexing its muscles, buying stakes and influencing in dozens of countries around the world. It is aggressively seeking to advance its territorial influence. The UK is a spent force instead of an imperial power. The EU continues to fray at the edges, fearful of a resurgent, mischief-making Russia, and buying in to Chinese bribery. Iran has arisen as a world-wide trouble-maker being encouraged by the Russians and the Chinese. America is threatened by a historic disunity and dysf

    “Blessed Is The Match That Is Consumed In Kindling Flame”* All of us want to live fulfilling lives. That’s normal. And reasonable. That is reasonable when things around us are normal, when the world is normal. How about when that is not the case? How about then? When the world is consumed in war, and world-wide disruption, it is normal that life is not normal. We are coerced into doing things that we would not otherwise do. Or we choose to do things that we would not otherwise do. It becomes normal to do the abnormal. Hannah Senesch, a Hungarian immigrant to Mandate Palestine as a teenager, volunteered to be one of thirty-seven Jewish volunteers recruited by the British. Their job was to parachute into Eastern Europe in 1943, to help the partisans fighting the Nazis. Even when her companions withdrew because they considered it too dangerous, she went on. She was caught, tortured and executed just before her 23 rd birthday. In her own poetic words, “I heard the call and I w

  Stories About Our Lives   Have you ever thought about writing the story of your life? Here you are, let’s say. You are about fifty or sixty, perhaps seventy or more.   So much has happened in your life, but you know you have more in the past than you can expect in your future. Surely you think there is much more coming, there are some crowning glories you are hoping to pull off. But you are pleased with the things you have accomplished so far. There have been some hiccups, but you have overcome them. It may be useful to examine some of those as you face some future challenges you know about. We don’t’ necessarily want the world to know the real story. We may leave hints just for the fun of it-to see if the determined, the curious, the conspiracy theorists, can follow the tortuous trail blazed through the thickets of our minds. After all, they are mysterious, jagged zig-zags of electric-nano-energies trickling between the cellular protuberances of our brain. Random variances in